1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to semiconductor manufacturing and more particularly to recipe management in semiconductor manufacturing.
2. Description of the Related Art
A recipe, or process program, is a piece of data that sets forth what a semiconductor manufacturing machine will do when the machine is run. These recipes are important to the proper manufacturing of a product. Accordingly, it is desirable that known good recipes be kept in a secured, version-controlled repository. Such a repository is called a recipe manager.
Each recipe typically includes a recipe body which has a number of configuration settings encoded within the recipe body. Changing these configuration settings involves changing the recipe body via a process called recipe editing. In many cases, the recipe can also be accompanied by variable parameters that are provided along with the recipe body. The settings of variable parameters override or augment settings in the recipe body.
One important client of a recipe manager program is the equipment interface. Equipment interfaces consult the recipe manager before processing and receive back a set of recipe bodies and variable parameter settings that are used for processing (collectively called a recipe). Current recipe managers allow users to select a recipe as well as to interactively set the values of variable parameters that are provided to machines at particular contexts. In a few limited cases, the recipe managers are capable of altering the settings inside recipes. Due to the proliferation of advanced process control (APC), which provides for continuous, automated changes to processes, an interactive approach to recipe management is becoming obsolete.
Known equipment integration techniques typically have the recipe manager download interactively configured recipes to the equipment interface and then have the equipment interface query an APC application for settings that override the setting received from the recipe manager. The equipment interface then either modifies the recipe body or changes the settings of the appropriate variable parameters. Although this technique can be made to work, deploying logic to make modifications to multiple interfaces is often tedious, expensive, and redundant. Modifying recipe bodies and variable parameters are recipe management tasks. Performing the recipe modifications at each of a plurality of equipment interfaces may make it difficult to assemble a coherent history of all of the actual values used in processing. These actual values are of significance to process control and yield analysis.
The SECS II communication standard (E5) defines the format and protocol by which a recipe body and its associated variable parameters are transmitted to the equipment interface. There is presently no known corresponding standard, however, defining the format in which the recipe body and variable parameters are transmitted from the recipe manager to the equipment interface. Each legacy recipe manager defines its own format, and it is up to the integrator to transform that format into the appropriate structure and data types for communication with a specific equipment interface.